


Merry Frickin' Christmas

by kayls



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Character(s), POV Second Person, Underage Drinking, and thinks that wine will help, jade is sad on christmas, jade studies ethnobotany, jade takes advice from frida kahlo.... who is on her socks, non-canon locations, sorry lmao my tags are all over the place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayls/pseuds/kayls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You sit alone with your dog, because, well, it’s not like there’s anyone else for you to hang out with...</p><p>Merry frickin’ Christmas, Jade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Frickin' Christmas

You were almost excited when you woke up, jumping out of bed with a childlike smile on your face. “John, Rose, Dave, it’s Christmas!” A jangle of a dog collar, Becquerel yawning and turning to look at you, but other than that, the hanging geometric wall art you made last summer dampens all the noise in your room… and your enthusiasm.

Your best friends aren’t here, dumbass. They’re on the mainland-- you're in Hawaii, timezones and thousands of miles away. They probably woke up to celebrate hours ago— except for John, who, while Rose and Dave spammed the chatroom talking about Christmas dinners, sheepishly said that the closest he’d ever gotten to a Christmas dinner was Chinese food with his brothers and sister at the place down the street from their apartment— his mom’s side of the family was Jewish, and his dad’s side didn’t give a flying fuck about Christmas or any other holiday— so the Jewish High Holy Days of Hannukah and the Feast of Chinese Food were the main events of his December. John, you’d venture to think, was probably hanging out in his brother’s room, playing Call of Duty or Sims or something, ignoring the barrage of mass-texts from friends who forgot that, no, his holiday was last week, but Merry Christmas to you too, anyways.

And you… you were here. You forgot how empty the house was— it was your first time, really, being home from university. You lived on campus, and when Housing and Residence Life kicked you out for Thanksgiving, you spent it with your roommate Jane’s family on the Big Island, eating the hell out of the baked goods they’d lovingly made. (You helped— when they realized that you were completely inept at anything that wasn’t green and in the dirt, you were put on mixer duty.) 

Being alone, now… well, it hurt. It was such a crashing blow, such stark contrast to campus. There was no ‘ohana left here— no parents to speak of, and grandpa six feet under (or, more accurately, burned up and scattered into gunpowder used at his own twenty-one gun salute. Gramps was a weird man.) You were all alone, now. You’d reached out some tendrils— you were pretty close to some of the other students in your major (ethnobotany wasn’t exactly booming, but it was what you were all so passionate about.) You asked some of the girls in your hall— there were a few who were scrambling to find ways home back to the mainland, one girl who was aching for a place to stay before her flight back to Hong Kong arrived— but everyone got their plans resolved, and politely, at least, declined your offer, wished you a Merry Christmas and a restful break, and dashed off to join their families.

You wish that you could say you’d done your bit of mourning. But as you settled onto the ground, Bec coming over and pushing his way through your arms, barricaded around your tenting legs, you sniffed. “Stop fucking crying, Jade.” You mumbled around your night retainer. Stupid thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. A whine, and your dog accidentally smacks you in the eye with his snout— you forgot your glasses too, dummy— before apologetically licking your nose. “Hey, boy. Merry Christmas, I guess. At least you’re still around.” The one person you could trust, kinda— your neighbor Jack, who watched Bec when you were at school— he’d gone back to the Big Island, too, to see his family. You were all out of options.

Peeling yourself off the floor, you stumbled back over to your nightstand, popping out your retainer and putting on your glasses. Nothing looked much better with a clearer view, but as your eyes started to fall around your bedroom, you lazily reached for your watering can and your stool— left to right, top to bottom, you started to check on all of your plants. English ivies being started in coffee cups, aloe vera near your desk, yucca plant by your bed, and, your current favorite, eucalyptus in the window. These plants were your babies— little flags decorating their homes denoting who and what they were. Whenever you weren’t studying plants for school, you were studying plants for yourself. The kingdom of flora was fascinating, and you wanted to know it all. 

Turning away after tending to the last plant, you stopped to check your laptop. Logging into your school email, there were unimportant notices— Manoa Campus Closed Until January 10, UH Alert: Recent Break-In Off Campus, See What Dirk Has Been Pining on Pinterest— but perched precariously at the top of your inbox was another reminder from the ethnobotany department: UH GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATIONS DUE SOON. You shrugged— it wasn’t necessarily for you, just a blast sent out to all the students in your major— you were just a sophomore. Applications were a little ways off for you. Still, your heart tightened up seeing the words ‘Grad School’ written so imposingly. Were any of your friends going to grad school? Or would you be the one left behind in a crowded sea of academia?

Your phone chirped at you from a hidden corner of the room— you turned to try and find it, only to see it sticking haphazardly between the wires of a hanging planter. Thumb grazing the home button, there was a little speech bubble on the notification bar. John had sent you a text.

{{from: a good egg

“haha, happy christmas jade! i guess it’s today, since everyone keeps texting me about it. :-P wishing you a good day and good chinese food. (seriously, everyone else needs to pick up on this trend. they did it in a christmas story!!!)”}}

You smiled, rolling your eyes. You tapped out a quick message back, {{“i think it’s merry christmas, john, but i appreciate the sentiment just the same!!! :B eat some lo mein for me— my favorite place is on campus and therefore Too Far For Me. :,(“ }}

With that over, assuming John would be the only text you got, and he usually was, you shuffled on downstairs, your brain stuck on your friends.

Rose and Dave were, honestly, usually in their own little world together. Despite both being gayer than Elton John and living on opposite coasts, you were convinced that the two of them were secret lovers and, simultaneously, an old married couple. Completely obsessed with one another, but also usually yelling and, from photographic evidence of their rare meet-ups, throwing shit at each other and making super valiant attempts to kill one another. You and John were allied together, but… mostly, maybe, just to keep the balance. You shrug again, you don’t really know. You don’t like to think about it a lot, because if you think about it, you start realizing how disposable you really are, in the whole equation.

At the foot of the stairs, you look around. You’d put up the tree when you got home, but hadn’t really bothered to decorate it much. It came pre-lit, with pretty white lights, but beyond that all you’d done was string an ancient popcorn garland around it, a few apple-shaped ornaments older than you were, and a Father Christmas on top… you always said that when you got to decorate the tree yourself, you’d switch to a star… but with Grandpa gone, you figured someone in the world needed to show Father Christmas some love.

Under the tree, though, was a sad-ass sight. You’d half-heartedly wrapped a bone for Bec. You had a jar of cookie butter, Jack’s favorite, and a thank-you/Christmas card to give him whenever he came back. You had a combination recipe book/sketchbook/journal for Jane, handmade after you realized that she cooked, drew, and wrote in equal parts, with equal talent. She was amazing— an actual triple threat (plus being nice, and being a good singer, and being super smart, and being a good actress, plus a million other things…) and you figured that making something like that for her would make her smile.

But for you? You frowned, tried to turn it into a smile— look at you being mindful and unselfish and… and… and…

Oh. Forget it. You quit. You’re done. You bump your glasses to get under them, wiping angry tears out of your eyes. No friends, no family, not even someone to talk to! Much less the boyfriend/girlfriend/otherwise-identified-significant-other you promised grandpa, this time last year, that you’d bring to Christmas dinner.

… Christmas dinner, for fuck’s sake, you’d forgotten that too. Man, where were you? It was like, in the months at school, you’d been trying to forget that you were ever anywhere else, that you had anything else to deal with.

Ouch. You wince. A little too right. You knew to kick while you were down, right where to hit.

Bec is sniffing at his bone through the thin wrapping while you head to the kitchen, Frida Kahlo on your socks whispering to you the secret to drowning your sorrows. "I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.” You murmur. You know her by heart, you saw her self-portrait of herself as a wounded deer and you knew that she was someone you wanted to study. 

Opening up the fridge, you want to shield your eyes from the blinding beauty. Who… who the hell left all of this alcohol here?! Your mind reaches back, making grabby hands at the memories… you think… you think it was Great-Aunt Sylvia and her family, when they came for Grandpa’s funeral in the summer. It’s all unopened, so you think it’s probably fine. Worse comes to worse, you know Jack’s spare key is under the cheesy ‘aloha’ doormat, and you know that he always has what you like to drink.

“Frida, Merry frickin’ Christmas. I’m trusting you, dude.” You reach back into the fridge, digging out a supersized bottle of wine. Popping the corkscrew off of the fridge with a flick of your wrist, you open it, consider grabbing a glass, but instead take your prize along with you to the couch, curling your legs up on the couch, tangled in the throw blanket and turning on the TV. It’s the weather channel, and your thumb hovers over the ‘guide’ button to find something you can drink to, or something that’ll seem interesting to watch once you’re drunk, but then the national weather watch kicks in.

You see snow in New York, and think of John slogging through the grey slush to get to his precious Chinese food, rolling the ‘Merry Christmas’s off his back. Rain in Washington, and you know Rose is cozy with her cats, wearing matching sweaters and drinking her coffee, black, rolling joints and studying her horoscope for January so she knows how to prove it wrong, even though you know she secretly believes in it like Scripture. In Florida, it’s 80 degrees and Dave is at the beach, nose upturned at the tourists even though he goes through the same damn thing every year.

And you take a big, big swallow. It feels a little warm once it hits your stomach. And you decide that you’ll be okay, with or without someone today. You’ll be okay because you know that your friends care, even if they’re not always great at showing it, even if the world is sometimes shitty at making sure you’re not alone, you know that you’ll be okay because sometimes you just need a wine-day, alone-day, and sometimes it just lines up with Christmas day.

You get a text from your hall director, Markus, from back on campus. “You doing okay, Jade?” He asks— you forgot he knew that you were alone, forgot that you told him tearfully one night after General Assembly for Hall Council (jesus, the nerdiest statement to ever be thought about) that no, you weren’t doing anything for the holidays and, no, no matter how stressful school was, you weren’t really looking forward to going home.

You decide to answer him later, though, and start up a video call with Rose. “Hey, let’s do a Skype call later tonight with the crew. God, I really miss you.”

You take another drink from your bottle, and you think that, at least tonight, you are not drowning your demons… but maybe enticing them to chill the fuck out.

“Merry Christmas, Jade. What’s your poison?” She’s all smiles.

“Christmas Joy, Rose."

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mean to write a Homestuck fic. I'm not even that in to Homestuck anymore. (Except for Jade. I still love Jade so much...)
> 
> Inspired partially by the fact that I got Frida Kahlo socks for Christmas, so she's fresh on my mind. Also partially inspired by Lilo and Stitch... mostly that Lilo and Jade remind me of each other.
> 
> Also I never knew ethnobotany was a real thing but I think it's the neatest thing.


End file.
